“In my opinion, I don’t think they’re doing enough. I feel like with the amount of money and influence that they have, they can actually be doing stuff to actually change things that I feel might be broken or that have been neglected over all these years. So, yeah, I think there’s a lot more that they can do with their influence.”
“We’re here because we’re older gentlemen. We’re all friends because we all grew up around here. Our guys come up balling here, from Nate Robinson, Jamal Crawford, Dejounte Murray, and yeah, I do think some celebrities are doing something for their communities. Jamal Crawford is doing a lot in the community.”
“I don’t think they’re doing enough, but they’re doing what our society has set up for them to do, is all. I don’t even think it’s a form of ‘are they doing enough,’ because what is enough? But how society got it set up is that they can’t do too much; they can do good, or they can do bad.”
“All celebrities are under the gun. They’re being pushed one way to succeed, and if they don’t do good, they’re in a tight squeeze. But no, they need to get with something—the Divine, the Lord, or something—and push for people to do the right thing. All the grace will come to them when they start doing that.”
“No, I think a lot of it is the musicians who feed into a lot of the crime. Because a lot of our younger generations listen to a lot of it, they’re influenced by it without realizing it. My generation, our rappers went to school and got a degree. Even though they were rapping, they still got some education behind it. These new ones coming up aren’t really doing anything positive. They’re actually leading that downhill destruction, just like with our athletes, especially our local ones. You guys have had enough, you’ve made your money, you have this platform, you’re able to speak up as far as the community, schools, what’s going on as far as the system for our younger generation, and I don’t feel like they’re doing enough for it.”
“When I think about Muhammad Ali and what he did, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Jim Brown, we need more Black celebrities like that to be more conscious of what the Black community needs. I think, like I said, back in the ’50s and ’60s, there were a lot more celebrities that were more conscious and wanting to help and use their platform to help. I think now they’re so detached from the Black community trying to make it. I mean, even though it was tough racially way back then, it’s still that way now systematically, but I think with the resources that celebrities have now versus what they had back in the day, I think they could do more to impact our community.”
